Internet outages at NJIT Tuesday and Wednesday

I had a reprieve from jury duty on Tuesday to find a major internet outage at NJIT.  As of 7 AM today services were not restored.  We were able to access the internet outside of NJIT, e-mail, the Highlander Pipeline, Moodle and other services were not available.  I could not enter grades for the quiz given to Math 225 students.  We had to go through the "back door" to show students how to get to the databases.  I am on the late shift at NJIT today and don't have to be at work until 12 noon.  Hopefully, the system will be rectified by then.  We don't realize how dependant we are on the internet until we can't accesss it.

I thank the IT people at NJIT for putting extra hours into rectifying this problem.

Information Literacy and the Substitute Teacher

I was asked by a professor of biomedical engineering to give a library lecture to a class in biomedical computing.  It was a 300 level course, so I assume that the students were juniors.  The professor was away at a professional meeting and asked me to give the lecture.  The graduate teaching assistant told me that students were advised in advance that the professor would not be in.  Remember how we liked it when a substitute teacher came to our elementary school classes?  It was party time.

There were 28 students registered for the class, but only about half showed up.  I gave my standard lecture to biomedical engineering students as posted on http://library.njit.edu/researchhelpdesk/subjectguides/Biomedical.php .  During my lecture 3 students walked out.  I observed that other students were inattentive.  I guess Friday afternoon didn't help.

It was very disappointing to see that students were not interested in learning about databases that cover their field of interest. We put effort into preparing these lectures and is just disappointing that students are not interested.

NJIT will keep the Desktop Version of Scifinder Scholar until June 30, 2011

About 3 weeks ago I polled NJIT users of Scifinder Scholar to see if they wanted to keep the desktop version until June 30 when Chemical Abstracts Service would discontinue it.  To be fair I did not vote to leave the choice to my users.  I was hoping that they would want to transition to the web version earlier.  Only 15 of the 300 people who registered for a Scifinder account bothered to vote.  I must assume that most used the database very infrequently or just were indifferent.  9 out of the 15 voted to keep the desktop version as soon as possible.  I am disappointed since they don't want to take advantage of the useful features that Chemical Abstracts introduced to the web version.

I am on jury duty

This blog has been a little slow because I have been on jury duty.  It is a nuisance, but we must all do our civic duty.  Even doctors, firemen, lawyers, and police officers must report.  No matter when you are called it is always at an inconvenient time, so you may as well do it and be finished for a least 6 years.  Please see my personal journal if you want to read the details of my adventures at the court house.

Impromptu Information Literacy Session

It has always been difficult to teach information literacy in the biomedical engineering program since there never been enough time or the proper place for it. In the past I was allowed to give a 15 minute lecture in Fundamentals of Engineering Design (FED 101) given to freshman. Today, on very short notice, I gave my short lecture to a large group on how to find information on sustainability in the field of biomedical engineering. These students were taking Humanities 101, but had not yet taken the Research Roadmaps where we teach them the fundamentals of how to find information from the NJIT databases.

I briefly discussed the peer review process as it applies to manuscripts being accepted for publication by a technical journal. I then explained how these articles can be searched in databases and used Scopus as an example since it is multidisciplinary. I showed them how to construct a search using terminology related to sustainability. I demonstrated the capability of sorting by relevance. Their assignment is to find just one paper with the abstract that explicitly considered sustainability in biomedical engineering or a closely related field.

18th Anniversary at NJIT

I am not going to repeat what I wrote last year. This past year has been a little tough since a colleague resigned and we were not allowed to fill the position. I became liaison to physics and to the biological sciences as a result. When the going get tough, the tough get going to quote a 1980s hit by Billy Ocean. Perhaps I should quote a song by Paul Simon "Still Crazy after All These years."

Some New Thoughts on the Textbook Issue

Let's say a library can afford to purchase every textbook and add to the collection when new editions are being published. Is the library properly serving its students? I think not.

A student must have access to a required textbook 24/7. Let's say a student is relying on the library for his calculus textbook. He may have to travel from home to get to the library. He then comes to the reserve desk and finds out that someone has checked it out and must wait a few hours to get it.

I understand students' pain when they see the price of their textbook. Last week a student told me that she is waiting for her book from Amazon.com where she bought since their prices were less than the bookstore. I think that students, faculty and librarians must fight back:

1. The open source textbook movement should accelerate.
2. Faculty should put pressue on publishers not to change the editions. Does freshman level chemistry, calculus, or physics change over the years? The publishers create new editions to dry up the used textbook market. It seems that the problem sets in textbooks change in newer editions.
3. Faculty must ensure that the textbook is used extensively. I have heard students complain that they have to buy the book, but it is hardly used.
4. Perhaps students can form a study group and split the cost of the textbook.
5. This semester the NJIT bookstore is renting textbook reducing the cost by 50%

My major disappointment is that students have to come to the reference desk to ask if the library has their textbook. All students must know how to look up a book in the library. If they can't do that they have flunked Information Literacy 101.

Chemical Information Literacy Doubleheader Today

For many years I have taught the physical chemistry class how to find physical properties of chemical substances. The professor scheduled me for September 15th, but I have on call jury duty for that week so she pushed it ahead to today at 1 PM. Meanwhile I already scheduled my general how to find chemical information to graduate students at 11:30, so I had back to back classes. Well, when the going gets tough the tough get going.

Graduate students are always more attention during a lecture on information sources. Most of the students were new to NJIT. The problem was that the laptop provided to me by the department did not have wi-fi capabilities so I could not demonstrate any web sites or databases. I was able to use my Powerpoint presentation, but had to walk students through the steps to get to the databases. I gave a relatively long talk on Chemical Abstracts and how it evolved into Scifinder Scholar. I was given training passwords from Chemical Abstracts Service that I gave to the students to use until the end of the day. At least for today students searching the database wouldn't have to worry about being shut out by the user seats being used. A showed students how they could set up their own accounts for Scifinder Scholar.

Undergraduates are usually less attentive. At least the professor let me use her laptop with wi-fi capability to demonstrate the various web sites where students could look for physical and thermodynamic properties of chemical substances. If readers are interested, they can access the list of resources at http://library.njit.edu/researchhelpdesk/subjectguides/phys-prop.php

When I arrived back in the library two of the graduate students stopped me to say that they had problems setting up an account. It simply that they just neglected to verifying their new account at their NJIT e-mail address. I am glad that the students were willing to learn to use Scifinder very shortly after the lecture.

Time Management is so important

I remember when I taught Freshman Seminar at NJIT there was a class devoted to time management skills. I observe that many of my colleagues lack those skills that we try to teach entering students. Very often they don't prepare their lessons until the last minute and are unprepared when they meet their classes. I always remember Professor Kingsfield (played by John Houseman) of the TV series the Paper Chase who always scolded his law students when they were unprepared.